Returning to Myself: A Solo Retreat Story

Three children. Fifteen years of marriage. A demanding job. A mother with health issues. I had become so focused on caring for everyone else that I had disappeared.

When my husband suggested I take a week alone - truly alone, not just in another room - I first felt guilty, then terrified. Who was I without my roles? What would I do with myself?

A friend had done this retreat and said it changed her. "It's not fancy," she said. "It's not spa yoga. But it's real." That word - real - appealed to the part of me that felt increasingly unreal in my own life.

For seven days, I had no one to take care of except myself. I had forgotten what that felt like. The schedule was full enough to provide structure: morning yoga, meditation, meals, afternoon practice. But within that structure was space. Space to breathe. Space to think. Space to remember who I had been before I became only wife-mother-daughter-employee.

The yoga wasn't what I expected. Not about burning calories or looking good - about awareness. About presence. About feeling my body rather than just using it. The instructors saw me, really saw me, which was startling. It had been so long since anyone had.

I cried a lot that week. Not from sadness exactly - from release. All the held tension, all the unfelt feelings, all the postponed grief and joy - it came out on the mat, on the meditation cushion, watching the mountains at sunset.

I came home different. Still wife, mother, daughter, employee - but also myself again. The practice I learned continues daily. Even ten minutes of morning meditation changes how I move through the day. My family noticed the change. They said I seemed "more here."

If you have given yourself away piece by piece, if you have forgotten yourself in service to others, consider taking a week to remember. The mountains of Nepal held space for my return. They can hold space for yours.